CBS’ new reality show ‘Hunted’ a tale of two halves

We like to think that we endured quite a bit today in between two dreadful NFL Conference Championship Games to get to the premiere of “Hunted” on CBS. This was a show, after all, with a ton of potential — it was the ultimate game of cat-and-mouse, and a chance to see something that fell in between “Mantracker” (a show we’ve had a love-hate relationship over time) and “The Amazing Race.” It had veterans from some of the top law-enforcement agencies trying to track down people across a land mass of several states.

Everything on paper with this show felt like it was going to be exciting, and to be fair, there were some moments where it was. Take, for example, seeing how some of these teams of two (hence the “Race” comparison) completely bungled their planning for this was amazing — especially those who made a calendar planning a lot of it out. Also, why would Matt & Christina, an engaged couple with clearly no experience running away from anything, use an ATM right next to a bus station? That is a dead giveaway that they’re going somewhere! They were the first team captured, though David & Emiley looked like they were in deep trouble by the end of the show. That’s your cliffhanger for next time on Wednesday, and there are still many more teams to be introduced and put out there into the field.

Here is where things went awry for the show: It all felt far too serious in the early going. The introduction was extremely long-winded, especially the “getting to know you” part of it where we learned about a ton of the various people who were out in the field. Robert Clark, the commander of the team tracking the contestants, should have been the host of the show and the leader of the team. The narration was completely unnecessarily, and it helped to make the show feel like a reenactment more so than something that was actually happening. Somewhere, a network executive felt like we needed the setup of the show told to us by the numbers, even though having their ridiculous behavior on the run was entertaining in itself. If you keep the narration, limit it to a few lines an episode. Nothing more.

From a producing standpoint, there are some obvious logic questions set up by the rules, and some things should have been more transparent — such as how much information the contestants had to give up about themselves in advance of going on the journey, and if there were any specific things that they could not do while hiding. The specific ATM limit was jarring, and there were times when the show should’ve just made it clear that this is reality TV i.e. entertainment rather than a real production. It would at least keep us from questioning the realism as much when this should be about escapism instead.

In the end, the issue with “Hunted” is that after twenty minutes, it felt like it was time to give up on the show — but by the time we got near the end, we were happy to stick around. The second half of the episode was dramatically better as the teams started to plot and plan out in the field and we could see all of the right / wrong things they were doing. The show does have something going for it when the tension is there and the fugitives are about to get caught. The problem here is that a solid foundation was gussied up far too much by rules and us needing to understand just how credible the “team” tracking them was. Now that the elaborate introduction is out of the way, maybe the rest of the show becomes more what we wanted it to be — something that allows the characters rather than the premise to tell the story.

What did you think about the “Hunted” premiere, and do you think that you would watch the show again? Share in the comments! (Photo: CBS.)